ELARA POV
"I can walk on my own."
"I know." Silas didn't let go of my arm.
"Then let go."
"No."
I tried pulling free once. His grip didn't budge. I tried again. Same result.
"This is…"
"We're almost there. Stop fighting me for thirty seconds."
I gave up on that fight because he was moving fast and I had to keep up or get dragged and neither of us was going to win this argument in a stairwell at midnight. So I matched his pace and kept my mouth shut and watched the walls get older and colder around us. Past the first basement level, past wherever the second was, past doors I'd never seen before and corridors that got progressively colder the further we went.
"Where are we going," I said.
"Somewhere safe."
"You said that already. I'm asking specifically."
"The lowest level of the Spire."
"And that's safe because…"
"Because nothing gets in or out without going through me first." He said it like that settled it.
I looked at the back of his head as we went down another set of stairs. The stairwell was narrow and the walls were bare stone down here, no carvings, no glass, just old grey rock that got damper the lower we went. The torches were spaced further apart and the shadows between them were thicker than shadows should be. They leaned toward Silas as we passed. Same as always.
"The rogues weren't going to hurt me," I said. "Krix was…"
"Kneeling to you." His voice came out harder. "I know what I saw."
"That's not dangerous."
"A rogue general pledging fealty to the woman carrying my heir in the middle of the Silent Forest at midnight is extremely dangerous." He stopped at the bottom of the staircase. A door. Old iron, big, with a lock that looked like it hadn't been opened recently. He pulled a key from inside his jacket. "The Council has eyes everywhere. If they find out Krix has aligned with you before the birth … before we know what the baby actually is … they'll move faster than we're ready for."
He unlocked the door.
It swung open slow and heavy and the air that came through it was cold and old and still. Like a room that hadn't had anyone breathing in it for a long time.
I looked at him. "What's in there."
He didn't answer right away. Which was already an answer.
"Silas."
"Come in," he said. "I'll explain inside."
I went in.
The room was large. Larger than I expected for a basement level … the ceiling was high and the space stretched back further than the light from the doorway reached. Silas came in behind me and touched something on the wall and the torches around the room lit up. One by one. Slow.
And I saw them.
Statues. That was the first thing my brain said. Statues, lined up along the walls, carved from obsidian, black and smooth and catching the torchlight in that particular way obsidian does … almost reflective but not quite. There were four of them. Life-sized. Women, all of them. Standing upright, arms slightly away from their bodies, faces forward.
I walked toward the nearest one.
She was detailed. That was the thing that hit me first … not like a sculptor had carved her from the outside, more like someone had taken a real person and just. Covered them. Every line was there. The crease at the corner of her mouth. The shape of her knuckles. The specific way her collar sat against her neck. It was too real to be art.
There was a name carved into the base.
Maren. 3 years ago.
I looked at the next one.
Lise. 6 years ago.
Then Calla. 9 years.
Then the last one, furthest back in the room, slightly apart from the others.
Sena. 11 years ago.
I turned around slowly.
"These are the previous surrogates," I said.
Silas was standing near the door. He looked at the floor when I said it.
"You told me they died." My voice came out strange. Flat. "Julian told me they died. That the Void got into them and they just … deteriorated and died."
"They didn't die."
"Then what is this." I gestured at the room. At the four obsidian women standing in the torchlight. "What did you do to them."
"I didn't…" He stopped. Started again. "The babies needed more time. Each pregnancy stalled. The Void inside the heir needs a living vessel to grow but the pregnancy was taking too long and the mothers were … the Void was draining them. They were going to die. So the Council…"
"The Council froze them." I heard the words coming out of my mouth and they sounded insane. "They froze them in obsidian to keep them alive long enough for the babies."
"It's a preservation state. They're not dead. Their hearts are still…"
"Where are the babies."
Silence.
"Silas. Where are the babies from these four women."
"The pregnancies didn't complete." He said it quiet. "The heirs didn't survive. The power wasn't right. The bloodline match wasn't close enough to…" He stopped. "You're different. Your blood is different. The ritual worked in a way it never has before. The Void chose you the way it was always supposed to choose and the baby is growing faster than any of them grew and it's going to…"
"And when it's done?" I cut him off. My voice was steady. I was proud of that. "When the baby's born. What happens to me. Do I end up in here with them? Do I get a name on a base? Elara, present day?"
He didn't answer.
I wanted him to answer. I wanted him to say something that made sense, some reason or explanation that turned this room into something other than what it looked like. What it looked like was a collection. Four women who'd come here the same way I had and ended up frozen in black stone while their babies didn't even survive. What it looked like was a warning nobody had bothered to give me.
He stayed quiet.
I turned back to the statues. Walked slowly along the line of them. Maren with her head slightly tilted, like she'd been looking at something when it happened. Lise with her hands almost reaching forward, fingers spread, like she'd been trying to grab hold of something. Calla who was young … really young, younger than me from the look of her face, and that one sat in my stomach worse than any of the others. She couldn't have been more than seventeen.
I stopped in front of Calla for a moment.
Seventeen. Standing in black stone in a basement nobody was supposed to know about. For nine years.
I moved on before I started feeling things I couldn't put back away.
I stopped at Sena. The furthest one. The oldest.
Something was wrong with her.
I couldn't figure out what at first. She looked the same as the others … obsidian, smooth, black. Same detail in the features. Same stillness.
But I was standing close now and I could feel…
Heat.
Not body heat. Not warmth from the torches. Something coming from inside the stone. Like something was still running underneath it.
"Silas." I didn't look away from Sena. "Come here."
"Elara…"
"Come here."
He crossed the room and stood next to me. I took his hand without asking and pressed it flat against Sena's arm.
He went very still.
"She's warm," I said.
"That's not…" He pressed harder. "That shouldn't be possible. The preservation state doesn't…"
"She's warm." I pulled my hand back and looked at Sena's face. At the obsidian. At the detail in it. At the closed eyes and the expression that was … not peaceful. Something tighter than peaceful. Like someone holding on.
The torches flickered.
All of them. At once.
I took a step back. Silas's hand came out and caught my shoulder without me asking for it and I let it stay because I could feel it too … a shift in the room, a change in pressure, the same feeling as when Silas's mother appeared by the fireplace but stronger. More concentrated.
Sena's fingers moved.
I heard Silas pull a breath in sharp next to me.
The obsidian cracked. Not loud … small sounds, delicate, like ice breaking in a glass. Lines spread from her hands upward, thin fractures in the black stone, and the stone … it wasn't falling away, it was pulling back. Like it was being absorbed back into her skin, receding, leaving her underneath.
Her chest moved. One breath. Then another.
Her eyelids opened.
Her eyes were dark. Exhausted in a way that went all the way down. She looked at the ceiling for a second and then her eyes found me and something in them changed … sharpened, focused, urgent.
Her mouth moved.
I stepped forward. Silas grabbed my arm. I pulled out of his grip and stepped forward anyway and leaned close enough to hear.
Her voice came out barely a sound. Cracked and dry and thin from however many years of silence.
"Run, Elara." Her eyes didn't leave mine. "The baby isn't his."
I held my breath.
"It's theirs."